


Dark overpass variations

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Disappearing, Gen, Late at Night, Minimal body horror elements, Missing Scene, Offscreen canonical rape, Time Loop, Tulpas probably idk, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27957617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: One day, Laura, Dale and Diane will walk into a bar. Like a setup for a joke, but pitch black and no-one’s laughing (almost).
Relationships: Dale Cooper & Diane Evans (Twin Peaks), Dale Cooper & Laura Palmer, Laura Palmer & Diane Evans (Twin Peaks)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Dark overpass variations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justnightvalethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justnightvalethings/gifts).



A black sedan parks in the alley behind the motel and this moment crackles, sparks and coils upon itself in the darkness. Two figures slip through the night, remaining covered in shadows even as they trespass into the cold range of the motel’s neons.

Standing dead still next to the column by the entrance, Diane watches their movements in the corner of her eye and sees that they are old, tired, dressed in blurred black clothes, there is the distinct impression that if the air were any thicker they would fade out altogether, but tonight is a night of terrible clarity and so they are allowed to exist, behind her shoulders, in the corner of her eye.

She would recognize one of them anywhere. The other one’s a universal constant.

“I don’t wanna go in there,” she spits out, huffing her complaint as she stares at the car in front of her, in the motel’s parking lot where another Diane is sitting and watching the door of a motel room, dread running like a wire between them.

“I’ll bet you don't,” says Laura Palmer, patron saint of self-destructive tunnel vision, as she and her companion make themselves comfortable sitting on the low wall behind the motel. “Terrible idea.”

Dale Cooper remains silent. It’s not like he has any other options, here and now of all places.

Eventually, Diane turns around to look at them. She jerks her head in a sudden movement and locks of her red hair cover her eyes for a moment, rustling like velvet curtains – and the the stage is dark.

Let us try again. The same black sedan parks in the roadway beyond the motel, the same darkened husks come closer until they can lean on the low brick wall.

“I don’t wanna go in there,” Diane laments again, less angry, more doleful, every syllable a dirge.

“Then don’t,” whispers Dale. Prays, almost.

Diane wishes she could run a thousand miles away. She turns around in a whirl, ready to bolt, red in her eyes, and – curtains, again.

Again. The car rolls around. Laura Palmer, leaning on the low brick wall next to the other shadow, takes out a thermos and unscrews it.

“Coffee?” she asks, exhausted.

Diane raises her shoulders in disbelief, but the offer stands until it rings sincere, three lost souls sharing coffee at the far-off edge of the world before they all fall down, faster and faster, and if they don’t burst into fire it’s because they are already ashes.

She turns around to tell them where to stuff that coffee. Curtains.

And again.

“So whose funeral is it?” Diane asks about the black dress, black suit, black shirt and black scarf, black shoes, black socks, black veil of uncertainty over their features.

“Not mine!” says Laura. It is the funniest thing in the world. Her cracked laughter fills the courtyard.

Curtains.

Again.

Diane ponders. “Where did you come from?” A Dale Cooper is inside the motel now; Laura Palmer, beyond mortal grasp. Yet there they stand, in the corner of her eye.

There are no words that could add up to an answer. In the end, it’s Cooper who tries:

“Dark corners and night roads... Diane.”

Her name rolls strangely on his tongue, as well it should. His voice is older. All of him is older, in the corner of her eye. He has shed the hardness she remembers from minutes ago.

“Where do you come from?” he asks.

“I don’t wanna go in _there_ ,” Diane repeats, which is the entire reason she is _here_.

Not that it's gonna tip any scale in the grand scheme of things, but it strikes her that he cares, that he has un-forgotten how to care. She turns around to – curtains.

They sit in silence for a while, this time.

“Are we having the same conversation two houses from here?” asks Diane, plucking words out of the night. It is not clear which conversation she is referring to since they have never spoken before now, not all three together; she may mean this simple question itself, repeating like an echo through the desert outskirts until it dissolves. Laura stands up from her makeshift seat on the brick wall and looks past their car to the dark silhouettes of low buildings. To wit, there are three figures in the distance, under the neon light of a porch. One is leaning against a column, the other two sit. As she looks, one of them stands up to look further beyond.

Curtains, somewhere.

The car parks and only Dale Cooper walks out, leaving his companion at the wheel. In a different story, she would be ready for a fast getaway. They have lost count of the kind of story they are in. All they know is they want to leave.

Diane does not budge. Cooper mirrors her stance, leaning against the other column, and they remain still in each other’s presence, generating a feeling there are no names for, something akin to scraping the bottom of the comfort barrel, with their nails, and the barrel is chalkboard.

“Fuck you,” she says, conversationally. The only possible start, and a start nonetheless. She turns around to face him at last. Curtains.

Again. Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer drive into her life (again, again and again). There are many questions she could ask yet none would amount to much, it feels.

“Weird season for travel. Where are you two going?” is the one she settles on.

Speaking in whispers, as one, they say that they are driving away from the clarity of spotlights. Where there is no fire. Falling out of the story and into the earth, into their wounds.

Sounds sad. Diane shakes her head. Curtains.

The car parks and only Laura Palmer walks out, leaving her companion at the wheel (he will not drive away while she’s not looking, she trusts, knowing full well that if anyone can make that bold assumption, it’s her). She walks up to Diane and puts a hand on her shoulder. This gesture bridges generations of fractures.

“Know any cool party tricks?” Diane asks, her mind elsewhere.

“For when your life is falling apart?”

Yes, of course, she nods. What other kind is there.

“Ever tried to claw out your own skin?”

Diane raises her eyebrows, whistles in appreciation.

An engine roars behind the two women. They exchange a startled look and turn around to – curtains.

(it was a sports car in the distance, Cooper had fallen asleep at the wheel, but this story goes nowhere in the eternity of the red room for as long as they carry its velvet edges with them.)

And once again with feeling, “Look, that’s nice of you and all but I cannot join you looking like a cross between a traffic lamp and a zebra,” Diane states as her visitors park and join her under the motel’s entrance, and they know who she is, and she knows who they are, because she would recognize one of them anywhere and the other one’s a universal constant, even though they are old and tired and blurred now, shadows walking under the motel’s neons. She knows that she is all wrong. The red of her hair is wrong, her demure beige straight shirt is wrong, the polish on her nails is dizzying and wrong, but she does not know how to change this. She has seen better days; it took all she had to make it out here, under this column.

So Dale Cooper takes her hand, gently, like he used to know how to do. He holds her for comfort, with extreme tenderness and ultimately useless but kind of nice, as Laura Palmer rips her skin off, piece by piece, nails digging deep into this wrongness until it comes off in bloodied rubber strips and she is free. The Diane underneath the red and beige and chevron is a shadow herself, with black hair and a black silk dress. A wind calls; she turns around to heed it. They disappear into the night, black car speeding onto the highway at last.

The motel’s courtyard is empty.


End file.
